Xcel’s request for withdrawal of its Hollydale Transmission Project Certificate of Need and Route Permit Application is before the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission tomorrow.  We’re 4th on the agenda.  Come on down, or watch it live!

Live Webcast

Public Utilities Commission Meeting
PUC Large Meeting Room
121 7th Place East, Suite 350
St. Paul, MN

Agenda

And look how a decision came down in Chino, California!  There was a transmission line through the community for a long, long time, and it was “inactive” for a long, long time.  Then one day, the utility started taking down the towers that weren’t being used, and stuck new bigger ones in their place.  Thankfully, the story didn’t end there — they had to take the poles down and underground that transmission line:

Chino Hills wins battle against So Cal Edison

 

Here’s the Chino Hills group’s website:

Hope for the Hills

Progress!

April 8th, 2014

mudroom1

The primer stuck on the walls!  YES!!!  And the new paint is sitting there in the corner waiting, “Stream of Silver” for the walls, to match the grease and such, and “White Lullaby” for the ceiling, but lots of plastering up there, so that may happen first, before the walls are painted.

A van load over to the scrap yard, and another van load over to the Humane Society’s garage sale, and… sigh… I gave up all my truck stuff, a coffee pot, cooking pot, and my CB!  It’ll be there at the sale, the end of an era… sigh…  I still have my license, and in cleaning out the office, I found my file box full of directions which I still haven’t thrown out (if you want to know how to get to Jacmar Sales in Alhambra, CA, or Seaside Cold Storage in Hayward, CA, well, just let me know!).

It’s so nice to have a little time off to get these stupid things done!

A simple project — NOT!

April 6th, 2014

DSC00197-reduced

The mudroom has been driving me crazy, the color is this dark depressing BLUE, and we tore out the awful laminate flooring that was in there, the vinyl underneath isn’t too bad, so in went the toilet, in went the washer dryer… oh, and did I mention that during that project, we found the “bonus room” underneath — a coal bin 1/2 full of coal!!!  Holiday gifts for all my friends!  But the blue of this room has persisted, same blue that my office was before I painted it and stripped the darker blue and purple off the woodwork, but been there, done that, and now on to the mudroom.

Mudroom1

… and now, to get rid of those ugly blue walls now that it’s warm enough to paint.  Something green/grey to make the floor look greenish flecked, not so grey.  No problem, so I thought, until I scraped at a few bumps on the wall, and two layers of paint fell off, it’s just in the middle, not way at the top and not way at the bottom.  Go figure.  So now it’s an utter mess, but scraped, sanded, patched, and tomorrow, sand some more, and slap on the primer.

mudroom

It’ll look better soon… floor cleans up well, need to put the quarterround in, and it’ll be painted, at least this corner and to the right where the dog food bin goes, and put up a cabinet here way up to the ceiling, and a shelf for all the crap that comes in the door and ends up on the “dog station” just inside the kitchen.  There’s a snazzy RED double decker toolbox below — but maybe grey spray paint is called for… what to do…).  And then after it’s all painted, the little sink goes in the far corner.